Everyone is so busy these days but when I get home from work I still want beautiful
delicious food and I want it quick, so what I've done is come up with the most incredible
italian feast in well under 30 minutes. So I'm gonna make the most beautiful Italian sandwich,
I'm gonna serve that with a great salad of dressed mozzarella, and then a platter of
cured meats with a remoulade. And then I make a beautiful dessert of granita,
blitzed up ice cubes made into snow with vanilla and lemon zest and mint. And the first job I'm
gonna do is a beautiful Italian granita, and it's basically like a frozen ice dessert. So,
first things first, get yourself a pre-bought pack of ice and you want to half fill your processor,
whatever size it is. And then in that ice it's gonna turn into like a snow but I want to scent
it with some other flavours. So first thing I'm gonna do is some mint. I want the zest
and juice of one lime and one lemon, this is gonna give it a fresh sort of zingy flavor.
And the lime. And then I'm gonna put some vanilla, um you can use vanilla extract or this paste you
can get in good supermarkets. And then the magic bit, just let it process until it turns into snow.
And then I wanna add about three tablespoons of sugar, just regular caster sugar.
Then very quickly, very quickly, we need to get this snow and put it in a big pile
on a big platter straight into the freezer. That can go in there.
Next up I'm gonna do a lovely remoulade and prosciutto platter. Celeriac,
it's in all the supermarkets, just remove the end like this. Gonna halve it carefully first,
just hands out the way. This I'll use another day. Just use your knife and just follow
that natural line, almost like a pineapple. And just cut off any sort of dark bits or skin,
and you're left with this. So I'm gonna half that and I can, you could either box grate
that or I'm gonna use my processor. So get your coarse grater attachment. Cut these celeriac.
Rattle it through. So that's the celeriac grated. Then just take a small handful of parsley,
that can go in next. At the same time I want about half a chilli that can go in
as well. Get yourself one or two nice pears, not super super ripe.
And then you're laughing. Basically you get these beautiful sort of matchsticks. The parsley's kind
of mashed up a bit and most of the chilli's mashed up a bit. We just got to bring that together.
We're going good olive oil, good seasoning of salt. I'm gonna use a little bit of French mustard
so I'm gonna put that in there, and then I'm gonna use whole grain, and whole grain mustard with this
salad is just so good, so a nice heaped teaspoon of whole grain mustard goes in there as well. Just
a swig of white wine or red wine vinegar, and then all you've got to do is get your hands in there
and just give it a good old mix up. So we got the remoulade done. So what I'm gonna do is pick
it up, put it in the middle of a beautiful board, and then I'm gonna put it together
with this lovely prosciutto. Just let it kind of wave and fall down naturally. Instead of going
flat, rip up a few parsley leaves and let them sort of fall naturally from a height, you know
and a little drizzle of olive oil, quality olive oil all over the board. That is our second dish,
a beautiful remoulade and prosciutto platter, look at it. The next thing I'm gonna do is a
mega sandwich, mega mega sandwich. I've bought some pretty good focaccia from the supermarket,
so I'm just gonna put it into some grease proof. I'm gonna reheat that for five minutes.
The next thing is to make homemade pesto for the mozzarella salad. So I've got some basil, one nice
generous bunch of basil. Roughly this much. So bang that in there. And then secondly, one pack
or 100 grams of pine nuts. We go untoasted to get the creaminess and the kind of ooziness instead
of the nuttiness you know, which is quite a strong flavor. You want about 75 grams - 100
grams roughly of parmesan going in there as well, and then just whazz it up. One clove of garlic.
Right lovely. Beautiful. Right about, you need just enough olive oil to loosen it...
stop. So what you've got here is a pesto, a paste. Get yourself
a nice platter. Get your mozzarella out. If you go to a decent supermarket they'll have
buffalo mozzarella. And then I'm gonna take a small proportion of this pesto
and you just want a nice couple of teaspoons on there, some good olive oil over there,
and I'm gonna dress the mozzarella in the pesto. And just put them sort of proudly in the middle.
I'm gonna get some lemons. From a height I'm gonna just put that zest, just a few little slashes. And
then basil I'm using Greek basil here which you can get from the supermarkets. If you look at it
it's just skinnier and smaller and slightly prettier and it's delicate and it's perfect
for this kind of thing. And just sprinkle that from a height, and this is really just for
sort of a freshness and looks as well. Dried chilli for some reason... just a few flakes
I promise, will make all the difference. All you gotta do now is just finish it off with a little
olive oil, just a few, literally a few little drips, completes the story. It's just beautiful.
Look at that. Utterly a celebration of summer, really really good. Right now for the mega Italian
sandwich. Focaccia is nearly done perfect hot in the oven, let's do the filling it's like a kind
of pickle okay. Let's have a look in here we've got peppers let's have some olives,
sun-dried tomatoes, mr caper. Let's have some greenies, little cornichon. So the old pickle
drawer is getting raided. I've got some red and yellow tomatoes there. So about four
nice, you know a handful of grilled peppers basically. Olives, just a small handful of
olives I've got some black and greens here. Capers - you know and think of it less as an ingredient
and more as a flavouring okay. So just a teaspoon of those goes in. Six or so sun-dried tomatoes and
you get that intensity. And then cornichon, or gherkins, or in Essex 'wallies' as we call them.
Just like a little pile, little pile so depending on their size I'll have three or so of these.
Little bit of mint. In actual fact I'm standing here next to the chilli...
I wasn't gonna do chilli but I am now. Just a tiny bit of chilli. So we've got the fresh mint
in there, a little bit of chilli first just some slices. With the mint just chop that up roughly
and then just clank it all. There's no right or wrong just clank it all up. Fresh tomatoes. And
you'd be mad not to buy those beautiful different coloured little cherries. So just once you've kind
of clanked through all of that, put that into the bowl. Little lemon juice. I just want that lemon
juice to bring together the family do you know what I mean, just that acidity that freshness.
Okay here is our pre-got focaccia. What I wanna do is cut this baby in half. The safest way to
do that to make this mega sandwich is find your halfway point like this and just score,
just lightly, all the way around like that. And then once you've scored just use the length of
the knife just to kind of effortlessly go through it. Quickly and confidently, take it off. While
it's hot, let it suck up beautiful flavour which is gonna be in here. This lovely little salsa here
is gonna be so good and the juice that comes out of it. It's hot, it's fluffy on the inside crispy
on the outside. I just wanna put a little bit of parmesan on there, because again like the whole
point of 30 minute meals is you're plating with attitude it's looking bold and exciting. And then
I'm gonna go back to my basil plant. So just kind of put you know a nice load of basil on
the top like that. And then over here just kiss that with a little olive oil. You can either put
a knife underneath it, but whatever you do you want to go quickly and confidently straight over
to here, one two three, and there you go. I like getting just a nice big knife,
stabbing it in like that. That is a proper sandwich.
And I've got just enough time to finish my granita. This granita plate is really cold it's
gonna hold that freeze as well so it's gonna look after all of this. What I love to do is just serve
this with a load of spoons in one side. So I've got a lovely pink grapefruit here just cut that,
into wedges I think. You know get yourself some halves of lemon there, I've got my lime here.
All of this gets squeezed over the granita at the last minute, mixed up and we just stir it
all up you get the sweet, the mint, the vanilla, all those sort of acids that it's just like a
beautiful slushie. Serve that with some yogurt and some raspberries. It looks different, yogurt
raspberries beautiful granita all those citrus flavours. So there you go guys look at that, we've
got the beautiful mega sandwich with the cured meats the remoulade, that beautiful mozzarella
salad, and this killer little dessert here. All of that in well under half an hour, brilliant.